It beggars belief really. But then again nothing surprises me anymore.
Quality assurance be damned.
The heads of the Health Department have no idea about the accuracy of the diagnostic tool that measured Covid or the sequence that was used to determine if someone was positive.
Before shutting the country down, you’d think they would have checked wouldn’t you!
Community Affairs Legislation Committee
01/06/2023
Estimates
HEALTH AND AGED CARE PORTFOLIO
Department of Health and Aged Care
[09:05]
Senator RENNICK: Thank you, that’s all I need to know. Previously the health department has said that the PCR tests cannot distinguish between live and dead viruses. How many positive PCR tests were false positives?
Prof. Murphy : I don’t know whether Professor Kelly can attempt to answer that. That answer is correct; PCR tests do not distinguish between live and dead virus. I suspect the false positivity rate of PCR tests is very low. Professor Kelly, have you got any insight into that?
Prof. Kelly : Nothing else to add. I don’t think that’s an answer we could possibly give, even on notice.
Senator RENNICK: This is the diagnostic tool that has been used to shut down a country for almost two years and is used to justify spending hundreds of billions of dollars, and you can’t tell me how accurate it is?
Prof. Murphy : I think there were some significant studies done earlier in the pandemic that correlated PCR tests against viral culture, and that obviously picked when there was a live virus there. I think we can go back. The Doherty institute did a lot of work on this. We can take it on notice and provide you evidence of the specificity and sensitivity of the PCR tests. Our advice, certainly in the early stages of the pandemic, is that it was highly specific and highly sensitive. But we will provide on notice.
Senator RENNICK: I will follow up with another question, then. Can you also provide—if you can’t tell me, and I would have thought you could—what actual genomic sequence you tested for? Which part of the 29 proteins and thousands of nucleotides for each protein? Which part of the coronavirus genomic sequence did you use to indicate that someone was positive to COVID and whether that genomic sequence also makes up other coronaviruses?
Prof. Murphy : We can provide on notice the specific primers and the part of the virus it’s used for. We do not believe there was cross-reactivity with other coronaviruses, but we can provide on notice. We have experts at Doherty who would be happy to provide that information.
Senator RENNICK: Okay. Could you also provide the product assessment report for the diagnostic tools used for PCR tests and the RATs. I can’t seem to find them on the TGA website but I would have thought they should be available so that we can scrutinise the actual diagnostic tool used to determine the positivity.
